


Down the Rabbit Hole

by thatdamnuchiha



Series: MadaSaku Week 2020 [7]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst, F/M, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Character Death, MadaSaku Week, MadaSaku Week 2020, Possessive Behavior, Protective Uchiha Madara, Reincarnation, Senju are Werewolves, Uchiha are Vampires, Vampires, Werewolves, because why not?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:20:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23460886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatdamnuchiha/pseuds/thatdamnuchiha
Summary: Sakura is terrified of creatures that lurk in the night.Though both her friends belong to that very category themselves, it’s not easy to forget the way it feels whenever she’s ripped apart by a certain wolf in her dreams. But not everything is as it seems. Sakura is fairly sure she’s forgotten something – something important. And her two precious friends just might be the answer to figuring that out.Day 7 (21/3)•	Reincarnation AU•	Dark•	“Have we met before…?”
Relationships: Haruno Sakura & Uchiha Sasuke & Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Madara
Series: MadaSaku Week 2020 [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1664476
Comments: 4
Kudos: 105
Collections: The Many Iterations of Haruno Sakura





	1. The Wolf

**Author's Note:**

> A very late Day 7... Oops. 
> 
> I wanted to get this out sooner, and y'know, pile more work for myself, but the words weren't flowing. But now, here it is. My seventh and final work for the last set of prompts for MadaSaku Week. Please don't ask me to update T_T. They're going to be rather sporadic for now, given the number of fics I have on the go.
> 
> I might even be throwing some more out soon (because why not - I'm already drowning in fics), though I'll be trying to finish most of my works I currently have out. My fics will be finished in good time. As I've mentioned before, I tend to dance between writing different fics, which is why I never manage a set update schedule. It's not something I can really change - since I write what I want when the inspiration hits me. Terrible, I know.
> 
> I'm marking this series as complete now - though none of the works are as of yet done. This is just the end of my MadaSaku Week submissions. Though there'll be plenty more MadaSaku and other ships to come. Because I usually either pair them together romatically or Sakura winds up being a Mini-Madara in some shape or form (whether it be by Madara raising her, or that she actually looks like a baby pink-haired Madara). Yeah. I'm going through a phase.
> 
> Day 7 (21/3)  
> • Reincarnation AU  
> • Dark  
> • “Have we met before…?”
> 
> Enjoy.

Grass underneath her feet.

Wind in her hair.

Growls echoing out from the underbrush.

Her lungs heaved, her legs aching as she sprinted through the forest. _He was coming._ She knew that much. It was a hunt. Had been since the very instant she’d crossed into _their_ territory. She was fair game, and she knew it.

She never should have ventured there, but her grandmother had come down sick, and they were out of the herbs needed to brew a remedy. Sakura knew the forest like the back of her hand. It was why she had volunteered to venture there under the cover of that night. She was just supposed to nip in and out of the forest.

Her breath came in pants, fear making her sprint that much faster. If she could reach the bridge… if she could cross into _their_ territory then he wouldn’t be able to follow. The thought filled her with hope, and her heart leapt as the small stone bridge linking the banks of the branching river. One bridge would take her closer to her home, but the wolf on her tail might follow her there. The other would take her into another dangerous territory.

A dangerous territory the wolf wouldn’t follow her into.

Mud and grass under her feet changed to stone, and she almost laughed breathlessly as she all but leapt into the shadows of the forest on the other side of the bank. She was in vampire territory now. Her footsteps slowed as twigs and leaves became a rough stone patch in the otherwise mud-ridden wood. She bent over to catch her breath, freezing as the hairs on the back of her neck pricked.

The growl ripped through the air, and her heart thudded as she turned. Tears pricked the corners of her eyes. “No,” she whispered, staring at the hulking white wolf that towered over her. It shouldn’t have been there. It should never have crossed the river. “No, please…”

She never stood a chance.

Teeth tore into her throat, blood gurling from beneath her skin, spilling into her lungs. She couldn’t breathe—

Sakura woke with a gasp, sitting up in her bed, grasping at her throat. The feeling of those sharp teeth sinking into her flesh was all too fresh in her mind. She hated that dream, but no matter how much she hated it – it hardly prevented it from coming back to haunt her every single year. That same dream had made her so hesitant to venture into the forest, but she was glad she had overcome her fear. _Even if it was just to run away from Ami and her cronies._ They loved tormenting her, and the one place they could never find her in was the forest itself.

Yawning, she pushed herself to her feet, excitement bubbling up inside her at the thought of meeting her friends there. The two Ami never knew about, and likely never would. They didn’t live in the village, and there was a very good reason for that. After all, it was rather hard to blend in with humans when one either drank blood and didn’t age after maturity or when they turned into a hulking, similarly unaging, wolf on the night of the full moon.

She could still remember the first time she met them, all those years ago, on the banks of the branching river which split the land into three.

* * *

_The trees creaked the further she ventured in, the cracking and creaking of wood making it seem as though the forest was moving – and wasn’t that a silly thought. Her mother had already told her things like that were nonsense. Faeries and other creatures of the night didn’t exist, and her mother knew best. It was why she had tried to stay out of the forest, remembering her tales of children vanishing in there, but Ami and her friends had chased her. She had been left with the option of being beaten and laughed at by the slightly older girl, or to escape her by sprinting into the forest where no one dared to venture._

_Her feet pounded against the dark brown dirt, and she ran and ran until the sounds of pursuit had long since faded. Panting, she fell to her knees at her odd destination, eyes wide as she stared at the embankment overgrown with grass and other nature. It was a three-way junction in the river, three little quaint bridges arching over the branches of water, connecting the land between them. She had never been there before – she had never set foot in that forest before, nor had she ever gone so deep into the maze of trees._

_So why did it seem so familiar?_

_But something was missing. Frowning, she peered at the other two stretches of land beyond the barrier the water made. Sakura shook her head. Nothing was missing. There couldn’t be. She had never been there before._

_“Neh, who are you?”_

_Sakura leapt what had to be a foot into the air, hissing like a startled cat as she turned to face the boy perched on the ground beside her. He had appeared silently, like a ghost in the wind. “I should be asking you!” she yelled, shuffling away from the blonde boy with the whisker-like markings on his face._

_“I’m Naruto, nice to meetcha!” he chirped, as though she wasn’t terrified out of her mind at his sudden appearance, sky blue eyes twinkling brightly in the afternoon sunlight. “Gloomy behind you is my bestie, Sasuke!”_

_Sakura spun, yelping as she spotted the black-haired boy hovering right behind her, black eyes boring into her own verdant ones like they were staring into her very soul. She felt oddly comforted by the feeling._

_Again, there was that odd sense of familiarity, tinged with wrongness. It wasn’t the same, her mind whispered to her then. What wasn’t the same?_

_“Uh… I’m Sakura?” she offered, wondering what they were doing so deep in the forest. She had never actually seen them around the village, and that was a cause for curiosity. They were a small enough village that she should have known almost everyone, especially those her age._

* * *

He was running away from her in the white space – the boy with spiky black hair – a white and red Uchiwa standing out against the navy blue of the shirt he wore. Sakura chased after him, eyes wide, panting hard as she ran to catch up with him. He was important, she knew, and maybe she would be able to get some answers if she caught him.

But she was too slow, hand grabbing at empty air as the call of the rooster pierced through her dreams and dragged her back to reality.

Dreams were such a nice escape sometimes. Though she still had both Naruto and Sasuke to look forwards to. They were her friends, and they met up all too regularly at the river edge. They would be there again that day as well.

Sakura sighed as she rolled out of bed, ready to complete her morning chores before her parents could start nagging her.

_She hoped the peaceful times would stay that way for a while longer._


	2. The Wood

Whiskered cheeks split into a wide grin as he spotted her making her way up along the pathway leading to their usual meeting place, and Sakura felt her own lips curve into a smile as she spotted her blonde best friend. “Sakura!” Naruto called, waving a hand at her as she broke into a jog to meet him there as he sat on the grass.

“Naruto!” she called back, skidding to a stop beside him, before she plonked herself down next to him. “How’ve you been?” she asked, curious as to what he’d gotten up to in the past week when she’d been unable to visit.

Chores took up a lot of her time, what with her cousin’s marriage on the horizon. Everything had to be perfect for that, especially since her husband came from the town. He was a posh bloke, and that meant standards were higher than what Sakura was used to. _But dimly she could remember that glass chandeliers and high ceilings with pillars of carved marble were what was really high class._ Sakura was fairly sure that was just a dream though, something which represented how she wanted to rise beyond being a simple village girl. It was probably why she had been so eager to befriend Naruto and Sasuke – not that her dreams of chandeliers or forest thrones had much to do with werewolves and vampires.

A crow cawed, circling the clear skies above them three times, before heading back into vampire territory, and Naruto only sighed at the sight. _At the signal that their friend wouldn’t be joining them for one reason or another._ “I guess Sasuke won’t be joining us then,” he mumbled, pushing himself to his feet. “But wanna see what I’ve been doing today?”

“Sure thing,” Sakura said, her insatiable curiosity burning up inside her.

“Neh, I’ll tell you that I went exploring, and it’s someplace our leader always tells us not to go, but what’s the fun in sticking to those boring, stuffy, old rules,” Naruto said, disappearing into the forest, leaving a trail of clothes behind him. The same clothes Sakura then went and picked up, all the while worrying about her dear friend’s rule breaking tendencies, shoving the items of clothing all into the basket she carried. Naruto would need them later, she knew.

Bones cracked, the familiar sounds of the transformation which accompanied the change making themselves known to her, before a whiskered blonde wolf slunk out of the forest. A wet tongue licked at her arm, and Sakura scowled. “I get it,” she grumbled, wiping at her wet sleeve with a disgusted grimace. _Always too affectionate, those werewolves…_

Naruto lowered himself to the ground, and Sakura took that as permission to clamber atop the wide, furry back. He was about the same size as the horses they used to go from village to village – not that Sakura had ever been outside of the small village where she’d been raised. Well, not out to another town in any case. The furthest she had been was where she stood right then and there.

Though it seemed she would be venturing further, with her dear friend at her side. A smile stole over her face then, joy welling up inside her at the thought of an adventure. She had always wanted to go on one – but her family and her village friends turned their noses up at the thought, not that she actually had any of the latter.

Naruto and Sasuke were limited as to what they could do as well – what with relations between their clans being tenuous at best. They weren’t meant to be meeting, she knew, but neither of them cared for social conventions. Despite that, they weren’t too keen on entering what would be classed as _enemy_ territory for each of them. More so considering both of their clans had enhanced senses – meaning any incursion made by the opposite clan would be noted.

It was why they always came to _human_ land. Neutral territory for the pair of them. It was how they had all met. After all, she would never have braved crossing the bridges to reach the other shores by herself. _A wise decision,_ Sasuke had told her.

Vampires did feed off of human blood. _She was prey there._ Albeit she was worth more alive and decently cared for, because living humans could still produce blood. _Over and over again_. Sakura had no intentions on becoming a blood bank though, so staying far away from Vampire Territory it was.

Though she was fairly certain Sasuke would try to ensure that she would never experience that fate. He was skilled at covering his tracks, as was Naruto. It was how they had been able to continue to meet. _They would be separated should their meetings ever be discovered._ Sakura shuddered at the thought. _Because if she was caught along with them, it was unlikely their world would let her go._

Sakura wasn’t quite sure she could survive without their world though. Naruto and Sasuke had been beacons of hope when she had first met them. They were her friends. Her closest ones. _Without them…_ She shook her head, shaking off the thought.

The last thing they needed were humans becoming aware of their existence. Though she might be counted among their number, Sakura knew she reacted better than most to the existence of the supernatural. _Probably because of her weird dreams._ But the fact of the matter was that her village was old and set in its ways.

They weren’t accustomed to change. They weren’t accustomed to accepting anything and anyone even slightly different from themselves. _It was why she didn’t associate with many in the village in the first place._ They thought her odd, and she had been ostracised because of that.

Sighing quietly, she let herself be carried through the Senju half of the woods, with Naruto padding through the shallows of the stream. _Naruto wouldn’t be caught there she knew._ His hearing was far better than her own, as he had told her, and he was one of the fastest runners in his clan. Only his father and one other could outstrip him in a contest of speed. Besides, the river was as neutral territory as their was – excluding human lands, of course.

Sakura chuckled at the memory of the look of sheer pride on his face when he had told them that much. Looking around, Sakura hummed under her breath, taking in the new sights, a frown marring her brow as she noticed the waters growing darker the further down the river they ventured. Chewing on her lip, she looked up, swallowing quietly as she stared at the darkening leaves of the trees ahead of them.

Something wasn’t right.

Shivers ran down her spine, wind whistling through her hair as Naruto padded on without a care in the world. _Like he couldn’t tell something was wrong._ Sakura shook her head once again. _Typical Naruto, charging onwards without a care in the world._

Sighing, Sakura could only cling to the blonde fur, trusting her friend in where he was taking the pair of them. Hopefully, it would be a nice change of scenery, and nothing too dangerous. _Though the almost electric tingle on her tongue told her quite the opposite._

**Author's Note:**

> SPORADIC UPDATES T_T


End file.
